"Saudi Arabia is no different than any other country in a sense that the military-to-military relationship that we have with a given country is completely informed by our policy," Dunford told the Washington Post in an interview on Thursday. "And so, there’s been no change in our policy with regard to Saudi Arabia that is informed our military-to-military relationship to date."

Dunford added that if the US policy toward Saudi Arabia changes, then military-to-military relationship will change as well. However, he stressed that historically the relationship has been strong.

American lawmakers have urged to end US weapons sales to Saudi Arabia after the journalist’s killing at the Saudi Consulate in Turkey.

"I will not weigh in on whether or not we are going to do that because the military dimension in this case is but one of the considerations our nation is going to have to make when determining whether or not to continue to sell weapons to Saudi Arabia," he noted. "Most of the considerations are very important but they are not military considerations."

President Donald Trump has said he will not stop arms sales to Saudi Arabia in response to the Washington Post columnist’s murder. Trump said such action would hurt the United States and give away large defense contracts to other countries, such as China and Russia.

Khashoggi went missing after entering the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul on October 2. After weeks of denials, the Saudi chief prosecutor admitted that the US-based columnist had been killed inside the diplomatic mission.